C14

The hissing went on for about ten minutes before it stopped. When I opened my eyes, I was in a burned-out house. The only things around him were the burnt walls of earth and the charred beams of houses.

I stood up. Not a single house in the village was intact.

The old lady stuck her head out of the quilt and asked, "Is it too much?"

I replied, "Yes, grandmother. What happened here?"

The old lady sat up and said slowly, "At the age of five, bandits entered the village and burnt a piece of it. Everyone was dead, my father was a husband, that night in the middle of the night, he was going to go out to play for more, but I woke up, clamoring for him to cook my noodles. "If father went out to fight, then we would be able to see the bandits' movements at the village entrance and remind the villagers to be prepared so that they wouldn't all die."

So that's how it was. The houses I saw earlier were illusions, this was a ghost village. They affected my nerves and made me hallucinate that this was a whole village.

The old lady continued, "The entire village is dead. I was the only one who survived while hiding under the bed. Hehe, I am the main culprit, but I survived!"

"So, in order to punish yourself, you didn't leave this place. Why don't you come out and fight every night? They will be sleeping during the day, and this village is very remote. It's also a tragic sight, and even if someone were to pass by, they would not stay behind, and would not discover you. "

The old lady was silent.

I said, "Grandma, the calamity that happened that year was not your fault. You don't have to punish yourself like that."

The Old Granny laughed. "Why do you think I'm punishing myself? I'm not punishing myself, I'm just continuing to work for the village. Everyone is still living here. "

Her words made my back turn cold. This meant that the villagers were suddenly killed, yet they didn't know that I was dead? And the old lady, in order to make herself feel better, took her father's gong and beat it every night?

"Let's not talk about this anymore, young man. Are you hungry?"

"A little."

"I'll cook a bowl of noodles for you."

The old lady went into the kitchen, fumbled for a lighter, set fire to the water, and cooked noodles for me.

I curiously asked, "Grandma, you've always been living here. How did you get all these daily necessities?"

"I grew some food in front, so I could sell it for some money. Some people think I'm pitiful, so they'll give me an extra two dollars. "

So that's how it was. I looked around me and couldn't help but sigh. So many people had died in an instant. I was still in the same state I was when I died in this isolated little valley.

"You can leave after you finish eating the noodles. Just now, another piece of the fire burned through and everyone was asleep. No mischievous brat would lift your car up so that you can't ride it anymore."

"Do you repeat the scene of the burning every night?"

The old lady nodded and said nothing.

After the noodles were done, I put down the bowl and chopsticks and said, "Grandmother, these people are already dead. There's no point in tricking them into still being alive.

"You want to send them off?" the old lady asked, looking up.

"Mm, see you out. I'm here to see you off. When I encounter something like this, I can't just ignore it."

"It's good to send you off, but it's also good to send me off as well. Thank you for your hard work." The old lady said.

How could I possibly send her away? However, I thought the old lady probably wanted me to send her to the orphanage, so I said, "Alright, I'll contact the nearest orphanage as soon as it's daybreak."

When the old lady didn't answer, I turned to look at her. She was lying on the ground, not breathing. I touched her hand. It was icy cold, not like I'd just died.

Could it be that the old lady had already been dead for some time, and was only holding on for a while, continuing to fight for the village like a living corpse?

It's almost daybreak, and many things can't be done. After working hard for an entire night, I'm also extremely tired. So I went to the old lady's bed and lay down to sleep.

It was around eleven o'clock in the morning when I woke up and looked up at the sky. The sky was very blue, but the village was surrounded by high mountains.

I got up, stretched, went to the well, got a bucket of water, washed my face, rinsed my mouth, and drank a few mouthfuls.

After a walk around the village, he noticed many graves at the foot of the mountain in front of the village. The graves were filled with weeds. The wooden tablets were covered with vines and grass. The words on the tablets were written in a strange, curvy manner: "Third Aunt, Big Doggie, Big Doggie's father, I wonder who he is …"

These were the corpses of the villagers when the old lady was young. They could be used to identify the corpses, and those who knew the names would write them down. Those who were unable to identify the corpses, would write "I don't know who they are".

He thought about how hard it was for a five-year-old girl to bury her dead body.

I carried the old woman's body here, dug a hole, and buried her. I found a piece of wood and carved it into it with a knife.

It was a huge project to send away all the dead spirits in the village. Fortunately, they had all died in their hometown, so all they needed was to be a door of rebirth for them. I've seen my grandpa do the Gate of Life before, now I just need to do an oversized one.

I got on my bike and walked back to a town and bought a lot of white candles and incense and then lunch and some bread and went back to the Ghost Village.

In the afternoon, I cleaned up the original grain drying field in the village. After I cleaned up most of the weeds above, it was already evening. I ate a few mouthfuls of bread and lay down to rest for a few hours. When I woke up it was ten o'clock and the village was back to what I had seen when I first came in last night. The houses were fine and dusty.

I put on the headlight of the motorcycle, stuck a chart of eight trigrams with incense burning in the drying field, lit a white candle in the shade of the diagram, and set it up as a path, linked to the diagram.

After all this was done, it was already 11.30 a.m.

I brought the old lady's gong, walked to the entrance of the candle path, and knocked on the gong. I shouted, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There's only half an hour before the gate of rebirth opens, so if you follow this path, you will be reborn. "

The chilly wind blew everywhere, but the flame of the white candle did not move.

I hit the gong again and chanted the spell my grandfather had used to send his spirit into the Gate of Life. After chanting for a while, a strong cold wind blew and all the candles were extinguished.

How could this be? They won't go?

A blurry figure walked over from the distance. He was hunched over and looked like an old lady, but didn't I bury her in the day?

I swallowed. Something wasn't right, I thought it was too simple. I wanted to run away first, but my feet couldn't lift up. Something was holding my feet, and I didn't have to guess to know it was the spirit of this place.

As the figure approached, it turned out to be the old lady.

She walked in front of me and fiercely said, "Brat, why are you meddling in other people's business? This damned old woman, if she hadn't pestered her father to cook the noodles, we wouldn't have died! We want her to fight for us all her life, we've blinded her, we want her to die, we want her to continue to fight for us! "

This voice was not that of the old lady, but that of a young man.

Suddenly, the voice turned into a woman's voice: "Do you know? I'm going to be born in two months! My baby's name has been chosen, the man is called Jianguo, the woman is called Cuihua. "But because of this old woman, my baby left before she was even born!"

I hurriedly tried to curry favor with her. "Big sister, I don't know the details of the situation." "But no matter what, you are already dead. You can just continue on your journey. It is not a good thing to stay in this world."

"Let's go!" Haha, why don't you stay with us! " The old lady's voice was sharp as she spoke. Then, a cold wind pounced towards me.

I was pressed down on the ground. The old lady walked to my side and changed her voice to that of a little girl. "Hehe, mom, let him go. Look at how pitiful he is. Our tragic deaths were the fault of Phoenix Fairy, it had nothing to do with this big brother. "

Finally, someone is speaking up for me. Phoenix Fairy should be the old lady's name.

The old lady's voice became that of a middle-aged man, rough and powerful. "Kill him, kill him, mind your own business!"

The surrounding crowd burst into a cacophony of cheers and revels.

Who would have thought that tonight, the last giver would be sent on his way by the spirit.